Starting Afresh
by WeasleySeeker
Summary: When you've been avoiding someone for nearly a year, literally bumping into them in Hogsmeade on a Friday night is bad luck. The lack of preparation forces Scorpius to face up to some facts that he's been avoiding for a long time.


**A/N: This one-shot was originally meant to be part of my Scorrose drabble collection, _Unconventional_, but I then decided that I didn't want to confine this idea to 100 words. So, you'll have more understanding of the background to Rose and Scorpius's relationship if you've read that, but it's not necessary for the plot of this one-shot.**

**Written for the Key Signature Competition, the Diagon Alley Fic Crawl Challenge, and the As Strong as we are United Competition. Enjoy! :)**

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Scorpius walked briskly past the Three Broomsticks, checking his watch and realising that he was already late. Oh well – he was only going for a drink in the Hog's Head with a couple of people from work. Nothing vital. He'd never liked the Three Broomsticks much; it was always noisy and crowded on a Friday night, and in his opinion, there was no point in going out to socialise with people if you had to shout to make yourself heard over other people's drunken behaviour.

He walked past the busy pub's entrance and found himself being knocked to the side by somebody coming out of it.

"Hey, watch where you're going!"

The stumbling redhead who had just walked into him turned around, and Scorpius's heart sank as he saw that he recognised her – it was Rose. _Shit_. He'd been successfully avoiding her for almost a year now, but now there was no way he could pretend that he hadn't seen her. A wave of powerful emotion flashed in front of him: anger, confusion, regret, longing…

"Scorpius!" she giggled, her face lighting up. "Fancy seeing you here!"

He took an abrupt step away from her as she attempted to fling her arms around him. "Are you really drunk already? It's not even half-past nine yet."

"You could at least _pretend_ to be pleased to see me," Rose pouted. They passed a streetlamp which illuminated tear tracks on her face. "Nobody seems to want to be around me these days. Even the guy I was meant to be meeting tonight. He stood me up."

"I'm sorry, Rose," Scorpius said awkwardly. It was weird thinking about her seeing other men; they'd been together for a long time before their disastrous break-up. "Look, let's get you home. There's no way you can Apparate in that state. I'm on my way to the Hog's Head, and I'm sure Aberforth will let you Floo from his fireplace."

"Never liked that place. The Three Broomsticks not Slytherin enough for you, then?" Rose said spitefully.

"Well, try Apparating if you want, but don't blame me when your right leg ends up at the other end of the country."

Rose rolled her eyes melodramatically. "I'm coming, I'm coming - there's no need to be like that," she told him, stepping on an uneven section of pavement and almost falling over into the gutter.

It was one of the worst reunions they could have had, really. Saying an awkward hello and quickly scurrying off might have been bearable, but he couldn't really leave a drunken Rose on her own in Hogsmeade on a Friday night.

He looked over at her as they walked in silence past Honeydukes. He would have hoped that she'd be different in a good way, that she'd moved on with her life in a year, but she really was a mess. The Rose that he knew wouldn't have reacted like this over being stood up.

She was shivering violently, and he supposed he should do the gentlemanly thing and give her his jacket. "You're bloody insane to come out without a coat on a night like this," he muttered, reluctantly draping it over her shoulders.

"I like this coat. It smells of you." Rose tried to slip her hand into his, and gave him a pained look when he snatched it away. "I love you, Scorpius."

He'd always hated how clingy she was when she was drunk. "No you don't. That's the alcohol talking," Scorpius told her firmly. This was really not a conversation he wanted to have.

"No, I'm serious," Rose insisted, gripping Scorpius's forearm tightly and making him stop walking to listen to her. "Even if the guy from tonight had turned up, it wouldn't have been right. He's not _you_. Why did we break up again?"

"You know why. Or, at least, you would if you were sober."

"You sound like my mother. It isn't against the bloody law to have a couple of Firewhiskeys on a Friday night," she said, rolling her eyes again. "We didn't seriously break up over what happened with Lorcan, did we? Because look."

Before Scorpius could do anything about it, Rose had seized him by the collar and pulled him towards her, allowing her to sloppily kiss him on the lips.

"_Rose!_" he protested, wiping the smear of lipstick off his face.

"That's all it was. Don't you see?" she demanded. "A drunken kiss doesn't have to _mean_ anything. We really had something, Scorpius."

She was looking at him intently, and he couldn't help thinking about how much he'd always loved her eyes. "Come on," he muttered, forcing himself to bring his eyes away from her gaze. Dragging Rose by the arm, he set off again towards the Hog's Head, and he could hear her heels clacking as she staggered along behind him.

He had no idea why he was helping her. He had no chivalrous obligation towards her now that they weren't together anymore – he was almost behaving like a Gryffindor, except that he was far too much of a coward. Any Gryffindor would have had the courage to face Rose by now.

Finding her with Lorcan at his twenty-first birthday party wasn't the real reason Scorpius had broken up with Rose. He could forgive her for kissing Lorcan, as much as it hurt him. But there were so many other issues in their relationship that he found he just couldn't put up with anymore. Despite her bubbly exterior, Rose was really quite insecure, and having to deal with that was draining. They'd always bickered, but in the last few months of their relationship, the petty things had transformed into raging arguments.

They finally reached the Hog's Head. It was thinly populated as usual, although according to his parents there would have been one or two people there in their youth, as opposed to the ten or so that were there now. Scorpius made straight for the bar, taking hold of Rose's arm again to stop her from getting distracted.

"I'm really sorry to ask this, Aberforth, but could she possibly use your fireplace?" Scorpius asked, gesturing towards Rose, who seemed to have sobered up a little from the long walk in the night air. "She's in no state to Apparate, and she needs to get home before she does something stupid."

"What do you think I am, a train station? But since it's you, fine," Aberforth told him grumpily, pointing them in the direction of a worn-looking door at the back of the room. "Just be quick."

Scorpius led Rose through the door into the dingy room, where, sure enough, there was a fire crackling merrily and a pot full of Floo Powder by the side.

"There you go," he said, pointing unnecessarily towards the fire. "Go home, Rose."

She shook her head. "Home isn't being stuck in the house with my parents, listening to my mum lecturing me about how I should sort my life out. I mean, I _do_, but I'm not sixteen anymore; I don't need her to tell me that. Home is in the flat with you," she said, and she'd started crying again, to Scorpius's dismay. He'd never quite known how to react to crying girls.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, Scorpius put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. The intimacy was painfully familiar. "Not anymore," he told her, but in a gentler tone than the one he'd been using towards her earlier. "You know that."

Rose sniffed. "I know. I'm sorry, Scorpius. I just miss you. The guys I've been out with in the last year… not one of them has had a single regard for my feelings. They make me think you must be the only decent man in Britain. You can't be, can you? Please tell me – I need something to hold onto."

"'Course I'm not," Scorpius said awkwardly; ignoring Rose for the past year wasn't what he'd call 'decent' at all. "There's someone out there for you, Rosie."

"I hope so," she said quietly.

"Seriously. Promise," Scorpius added. There was an awkward pause that would never have happened between them before; being together had always been so effortless.

"Shit, my head's still buzzing. Why did nobody take that Firewhiskey away from me?" Rose said in despair. "Thanks for getting me here, Scorpius." She started running her fingers through her hair, like she always did when she was nervous. "Look, I don't really know how to say this… I'm not asking you to take me back or anything, Scorpius, because I really fucked up and I know I don't deserve it. But… we were _best friends_. Are we really going to carry on pretending we're strangers? That none of that happened? I mean—"

"Rose, you need to go home now," Scorpius interrupted. "We can discuss this tomorrow, I'll send you an owl or something—"

"But will you?" Rose cut across him. "I wanted to give you some space, Scorpius, but it's been a year. We do need to talk about this."

Scorpius sighed. He really wished they didn't, but Rose was probably right, as usual. "Fine. I will. You have my word."

"I'll hold you to it. And you know I will," she warned. "I swear to Merlin – if I don't hear from you tomorrow, I'll sit on your bloody doorstep until you let me in."

"You'll hear from me tomorrow," Scorpius promised again.

Rose didn't look entirely satisfied, but took a pinch of Floo Powder, dropped it and stepped into the flames, disappearing in a swirl of green.

Letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding, Scorpius made his way back into the bar. It seemed as though his colleagues had been and gone in the time it had taken him to walk Rose there, but he was past caring.

"Double Firewhiskey, please, Aberforth," he requested, slamming some money down on the bar.

Today had alerted Scorpius to the fact that he'd been avoiding for all this time: no matter how much he wished he wasn't, he was still in love with Rose Weasley.

Ending their relationship was meant to have been a relief, a weight off his shoulders. But not a day had gone by when he hadn't thought about Rose, wondered what she was doing, and felt guilty about leaving her when it was clear that she needed help to get back on track.

Maybe that wasn't his responsibility. Looking past the agony at the end was hard, but it wasn't like he hadn't got anything out of their relationship – and as Rose pointed out, they'd been best friends for years before that. Rose wasn't elegant or classically beautiful, but she was _her_, and personality just radiated from her.

He thought back to those golden days before everything went wrong, and how they used to spend long summer's days just lying on the grass in Rose's garden, laughing together and talking about nothing in particular. When he was with Rose, there had actually been some meaning in his life, the kind of meaning that had been eluding him for the past year.

Suddenly, Scorpius began to feel hopeful. They didn't have to jump straight back into a romance. Maybe having Rose back in his life in some capacity wouldn't be as harmful as he thought. Maybe they could start afresh.


End file.
